According to climatologists at Berkeley Earth, 2023 has an 81% chance of breaking heat records. Human-induced climate change is exacerbating natural weather patterns, causing extreme heat in Asia, Europe and North America.

Reasons

• One of the main factors Temperature fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño. This phenomenon does not occur every year, but it has just begun in the summer of 2023, and therefore satellites are observing additional heat in the North Atlantic.
• The temperature in the area may also increase due to reduction in two substances that normally reflect sunlight from the ocean: Dust blown from the Sahara Desert and sulfur aerosols from the use of marine fuel. Scientists have recorded an extremely low level of dust rising from the Sahara in recent months. At the same time, new restrictions on shipping reduced emissions of toxic sulfur. “It doesn’t explain the entire North Atlantic temperature rise, but it may be exacerbating it.”– adds scientists.

Warming oceans affect the weather on land, causing heat waves and droughts in some places and hurricanes in others. According to Richard Allan, professor of climatology, a warmer atmosphere absorbs moisture and expels it elsewhere. At the same time, the anticyclones that brought the heat waves became longer and more intense.

Where stagnant areas of high pressure persist over the continents, the air descends and warms, melting the clouds. That’s why intense summer sun burns the soil, warming the soil and the air above it, and heat waves stay in place for weeks.
– says Allan.

In Europe, for example, warm air from Africa now remains constant, and high pressure means that heat continues to build up in the southern seas, land and air.

The heatwaves in July are not a single phenomenon, but several causes acting at the same time. But everyone they are exacerbated by one factor – climate change caused by human activities.

Experts from Berkeley Earth have warned that an El Nino could make Earth even warmer in 2024. Heat waves may become more frequent and more intense, according to climatologists. “This is just the beginning. Deep, rapid and sustained reductions in carbon emissions to zero may halt warming, but humanity will have to adapt to even stronger heatwaves in the future.”– Simon Lewis, Head of the Science of Global Change at University College London, concluded his speech.